First course booking and date confirmation

Well I am excited, we had the first enquirey for the course today, and also received a Diwali card from Kavita who was on it this year. The dates are confirmed as advertised - 6th - 19th of May, with teaching from Myself, Sarah Pugh, I think Mike Feingold, plus a host of thers, Steve Pickup, Niels Corfield, Mandy Dean. We are concentrating on doing more practicals this time around, hopefully starting an intensive willow coppice plantation with Steve, working with green manures with Niels and also doing some scything and learning some great techniques for getting on top of rough land and creating loads of useful mulch materials.

It has taken me a long time to realise that this is exactly the technique we need here to get on top of the land and to reinforce all the plantings we have done here. Strimmers cant handle bracken and brambles, its all gets tangled up in it, the scythe makes light work of it.

.Have been updating the schools garden blog, so do check that out, me and Dave have been busy down in Reading working on the Aspire schools project in Whitley, bringing elements of forest garden design to a selection of schools there.